title: Spider silks from plants - a challenge to create native-sized spidroins.
abstract: Silk threads from spiders exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties, such as superior toughness and elasticity. Spider silks consist of several different large repetitive proteins that act as the basic materials responsible for these outstanding features. The production of spider silk protein variants in plants opens up new horizons in the production and functional investigation that enable the use of spider silks in innovative material development, nanotechnology and biomedicine in the future. This review summarizes and discusses production of spider silk protein variants in plants, especially with regards to plant expression systems, purification strategies, and characteristics of spider silk variants. Furthermore, the challenge of producing native-sized recombinant spidroins in planta is outlined, presenting three different strategies for achieving these high repetitive proteins with the help of non-repetitive C-terminal domains, crosslinking transglutaminase, and self-linking inteins. The potential of these fascinating proteins in medicine is also highlighted.
authors.affiliation: Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Stadt Seeland, OT Gatersleben, Germany.
authors.forename: Valeska
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Hauptmann
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Weichert
authors.forename: Marziya
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rakhimova
authors.forename: Udo
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Conrad
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D005349:Fibroins / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000302:isolation & purification; D047668:Inteins / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000378:metabolism*; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000737:chemistry / Q000302:isolation & purification; D047011:Silk / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D013112:Spiders / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D010940:Plant Proteins; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; D047011:Silk; D005349:Fibroins
keywords: Intein; Multimerization; Spider silk; Transgenic plants; Transglutaminase